Benefits of veggie diet

Eating vegetables before pregnancy helps prevent leukemia to the unborn child.

A new research has revealed that eating more vegetables, fruits and protein before pregnancy, lessens the chances of a child being exposed to the risk of leukemia.

"This is the first time researchers have conducted a systematic survey of a woman's diet and linked it to the risk of childhood leukemia," claimed Dr. Kenneth Olden, the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

The study, conducted by the University of California researchers and published in the recent issue of Cancer Causes and Control, compared women who had a child diagnosed with acute leukemia with a control group of women whose children did not have the disease.

The researchers considered factors like sex, age, race, and country of residence at birth to arrive at their conclusions.

After comparing the diets of the two groups 12 months prior to pregnancy, the researchers found that the higher the intake of vegetables, fruit and foods in the protein group, the lower was the risk of leukemia.

"The health benefits of fruits and vegetables have been known for a long time. What we found in this study is that the protein foods group is also very important," said principal investigator Gladys Block, a professor of epidemiology and public health nutrition at U.C. Berkeley.

The researchers also found that glutathione, an antioxidant found in both meat and legumes, was the nutrient in the protein group with a strong link to lower cancer risk.

"Fetal exposure to nutritional factors has a lot to do with what mom eats. These findings show how vital it is that women hoping to get pregnant, as well as expectant moms, understand that critical nutrients in vegetables, fruit and foods containing protein, such as meat, fish, beans and nuts, may protect the health of their unborn children," said Christopher Jensen, a nutritional epidemiologist at U.C. Berkeley and lead author of the paper.